The teachings of Obama's tan suit the fifth anniversary

However, when the press conference ended, today's general discussion was not about a lack of strategy in the fight against a terrorist group in the Middle East.

Instead, it was about taupe, the color of the suit that Obama wore that day.

Five years in Washington can feel like a lifetime ago, and the way Obama's suit was treated back then is for many an example of how something so trivial would be in today's news cycles. Times have come changed.

The gist of the affair was the shock of seeing Obama emerge in his normal, traditional blue or gray suits, resulting in such a disruptive disruption of American acceptance of the presidential election. New York MP Peter King intervened during a CNN appearance, saying that it would take the country less seriously to take over ISIS.

"(Obama) looked like he was on his way to a party in the Hamptons," King had said. and "The Boldness of Taupe" ̵

1; Lou Dobbs of Fox News went so far as to call it "non-presidential" and tried to suggest that Obama sent some kind of hidden message, possibly to our enemies, about the suit's color. 19659002] In 2014, a serious policy – the Syrian conflict with IS – was usurped by the absurdity of the color of a suit. In 2019, you sometimes get the feeling that the absurd can be the serious policy. This week alone, it was reported that President Donald Trump had talked about nuclear cyclones, waffled over Chinese trade agreements, and hinted that the first lady in the United States had met North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and wished him a happy birthday World Wrestling Entertainment operates.

This is just a sample.

Perhaps then a livelier white house press corps was slightly distracted from issues than it is today – a president announced that he had no definitive strategy as he simultaneously sent more US troops abroad. But five years ago, Washington seemed more inclined to worry about the absurdity of Obama's fashion selection than to double the legitimate content of the press conference. Not that there were no stories or focused on the ISIS crisis – they existed. But the bigger consequence of the day was that Obama should not wear suntan according to the vernacular vernacular.

So robust was the talk about the suit that forced press spokesman Josh Earnest to tell reporters that the next day, Obama still feels "pretty good at his decision" to wear it.

"The President is very much in favor of the decision he made yesterday to wear his summer suit at yesterday's press conference," said Earnest, a frequent presence on the podium in the meeting room, which was now being left by a spokesman to continue 170 days.

One month before Obama's press conference, the Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian was arrested in Iran for espionage and eventually convicted in an Iranian trial. On Wednesday, the fifth anniversary of the tanning suit, he offered the most revealing picture – and a comment on perspective.

"I was in jail when this happened, today I literally hear about it for the first time … If this was actually a matter that was to be dealt with at the time – and now – we are indeed the most privileged – and maybe the smallest – nation ever ", he tweeted .